Towels and tissues are stacked and delivered to a dispenser so that as each tissue is withdrawn from the box, the next tissue is moved to a position protruding from the apertures through which the towels or tissues are withdrawn. This action of delivering the next towel or tissue to a position protruding through the aperture is achieved by overlapping the folds of adjacent tissues in the tissue stack.
There are two constraints in the formation of a tissue stack. Firstly the portion protruding from the aperture must be of a size enabling the user to grasp the tissue. Also the portion extending from the dispenser must be of a sufficient size and therefore strength so that when it is gripped the tissue can be withdrawn from within the box without tearing of the tissue. The next constraint is the number of tissues contained within a stack to be located within the dispenser. If the tissue strength is increased so that the tissue does not rip as it is being withdrawn from within the box, the stack becomes too thick. It is therefore in some instances, desirable to minimise the thickness of the sheet in order to ensure that the stack contains a sufficient number of tissue sheets.
A first known tissue or towel stack includes adjacent tissues or towels overlapping by one panel only. In other instances, the tissues or towels consist of a single sheet but again the adjacent tissues are only overlapped by a single panel. In a still further configuration, again the tissues or towels are of a single thickness but overlap adjacent a fold only.
In the first two discussed stacks, each tissue consists of three folds. In the last mentioned stack, each tissue has three fold panels and two part panels.
The above discussed towel or tissue stacks suffer from the disadvantage that they do not provide a stack which is compact and therefore provides a desired number of towel or tissue sheets while at the same time providing towel or tissue sheets which can be withdrawn from within the dispenser regularly without tearing.
Commerically available machines that produce tissue or towel stack suffer from the disadvantage that they can only produce stacks of the above kind. They are provided with a lap roll spaced from a retard roll, but are driven at relative speeds so that the tissues or towels overlap as discussed above.